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Dagelijks archief 3 december 2016

On Friday, Israeli soldiers, stationed behind the border fence, east of Gaza, fired many live rounds, rubber-coated steel bullets and gas bombs, at Palestinians protesting close to the fence, east of Gaza city, moderately wounding one Palestinian with a live round in his head.

The soldiers, stationed at the Nahal Oz military base across the border fence, fired many live rounds at the Palestinian protesters, wounding a young man in the head, before local medics moved him to the Shifa Hospital, in Gaza.

Medical sources said the young man suffered is currently in a moderate condition, at the Intensive Care Unit.

They added that many Palestinians suffered the effects of teargas inhalation, and received the needed treatment by field medics.

In addition, several Palestinians were injured after the soldiers, stationed on military towers, east of the al-Boreij refugee camp, in central Gaza, fired many live rounds and gas bombs at them.

Palestinian prisoners’ affairs organizations, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, released the following monthly report on Saturday, 3 December, of events relating to the arrest and imprisonment of Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces in November 2016. Translation by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. (Photo for illustration purposes only.)

In the month of November 2016, 527 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza were arrested, including 120 children and 11 women. 163 were arrested in Jerusalem (including 74 children) and 100 were arrested in al-Khalil. 50 were arrested in Ramallah and Al-Bireh, another 50 in Bethlehem, 42 in Jenin, 39 in Nablus, 27 in Tulkarem, 17 in Salfit, 11 in Qalqilya, 10 in Jericho, six in Tubas, and 12 from the Gaza Strip.

There are approximately 7,000 total Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including 48 women prisoners, 11 of them being minor girls. The total number of child prisoners is approximately 350, with the majority held in Megiddo and Ofer prison. There are approximately 700 total administrative detainees. 111 administrative detention orders for imprisonment without charge or trial were issued in November, including 32 new orders.

Continued Arbitrary Detention of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip

Israeli occupation forces are continuing the policy of arbitrary detention against Palestinian civilians in Gaza and violating international human rights law and international humanitarian law. Palestinians are arrested without charge and legal procedures are not followed in the arrest of Palestinians. Moreover, the right to a fair trial guaranteed by international standards and instruments is consistently violated, in particular in the denial of Palestinian detainees’ right to information about their own case, including the reason for their detention and access to a lawyer before they are brought before a military court. In addition, occupation forces regularly use excessive and extreme force during detention operations, for example the use of heavy gunfire against Palestinian fishermen at sea, putting their lives at risk for no reason. During the month of November, six incidents resulted in the arrest of 12 Palestinian civilians, including eight fishermen arrested at sea.

Battle of the Empty Stomachs

At the end of November, four prisoners are engaged in an open hunger strike, three against the policy of administrative detention. Ahmad Abu Fara and Anas Shadid have been on an open hunger strike since 25 September in protest of administrative detention. Both are in a serious health condition at Assaf Harofeh hospital. Their administrative detention has been “suspended” by the Israeli courts and the two detainees have announced their rejection of this action. In addition, Ammar Hmour continues his hunger strike since 21 November in protest of his administrative detention.

Kifah Hattab also announced his hunger strike during the month of November, demanding that Israel deal with him as a prisoner of war. Noor el-Din Amer ended his hunger strike, which lasted for 20 days, against solitary confinement and the dneial of family visits, in an agreement with the prison administration. Under this agreement, his sister will be allowed to visit him in the coming period, he will be able to receive winter clothing during her visit, and conditions of his confinement in Ashkelon prison will be improved.

Injustices Against Children

During the month of November, Israeli occupation courts issued unjust sentences against dozens of children, mostly from Jerusalem, in addition to the imposition of heavy fines and damages in the thousands of shekels. Sentences ranged from months to over ten years. The most prominent case is that of Ahmad Manasrah, sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment and fines of 180,000 NIS ($47,150 USD). The two children Munther Khalil Abu Mayalah, 15, and Mohammed Taha, 16, were sentenced to 11 years in prison each; both had a 50,000 NIS ($13,100) fine imposed upon them. Nurhan Awad was sentenced to a prison term of 13 1/2 years and a 30,000 NIS ($8000) fine was imposed upon her. There are dozens of detained children still awaiting their fate before the occupation court.

Bahaa al-Najjar Imprisoned after One Week of Freedom, Returned to Administrative Detention

On 2 November, 2016, the imprisonment of Bahaa al-Najjar, 21, from al-Khalil expired. On the evening of this date, without receiving any official paperwork for his release, he was told that there was no new administrative detention order issued against him and so he was released – but that did not last long. Bahaa was arrested once again on 9 November, and once again ordered to administrative detention without charge or trial for six months.

The case of al-Najjar represents the policy of administrative detention as a method of psychological torture against prisoners by the occupation. In addition, the United Nations Working Group onn Arbitrary Detention also considers the occupation practices administrative detention systematically and on a large scale against Palestinian civilians. With the denial of the right to a fair trial, this constitutes a grave breach of Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The Palestinian prisoner Yusri Al-Masri, 31, said that he is suffering from a severe weakness in his eyesight, putting him at the risk of losing it at any moment.

He blamed Israeli medical negligence over his condition, adding that he did not receive proper treatment for his retinal detachment problems.

Masri said in a letter to Mohjat Al-Quds Society on Saturday that he has been suffering for months from a blur and black points in his eyes. This caused him severe pains in his eyes other than the pains he suffers in his backbone and spinal cord with no treatment being provided for him.

In his letter, Masri called on human rights institutions and societies concerned with the Palestinian prisoners’ affairs to put pressure on the Israeli courts to provide necessary treatment for him. He also asked for a specialist doctor to diagnose his case as he is suffering from regular pains in his liver and intestines as well.

Masri, who hails from Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza Strip, was arrested by the Israeli occupation forces on 9th June 2003 and sentenced to 20 years for being a member of Islamic Jihad Movement. Masri is one of the victims of the deliberate medical neglect policy in the Israeli jails, and his case ranks among the most dangerous.

JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Two Palestinian brothers in the neighborhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem were forced to demolish their own homes on Saturday in compliance with an Israeli court order.One of the owners, Said al-Abbasi told Ma’an that he and his brother Nasr had built their homes in the Karm al-Sheikh area of Silwan two-and-a-half years ago. However, before construction could be completed, the Jerusalem municipality delivered demolition orders for their homes.During the court hearings, the Abbasi brothers, who are the fathers 12 children combined, were forced to close the construction site with concrete until all legal proceedings had concluded.Said told Ma’an that the Jerusalem municipality had threatened to imprison the two brothers if they tried to resume construction at the site.According to the brothers, they had attempted to obtain a license from the Jerusalem municipality over the past two years, but all their efforts were rejected. An Israeli court rules in October that the houses must be demolished for lacking Israeli-issued building permits and the fact that the homes were being built on land the municipality had declared an “open space reserve.”The brothers eventually chose to self-demolish their homes to avoid costly fees charged to Palestinians by the municipality if they were to carry out the demolition.

A spokesperson for the Jerusalem municipality was not immediately available to comment on the incident.

Nine Palestinian households were also left without a steady income in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina when they were forced to demolish their own commercial stores, and 12 Palestinians were left homeless when they were forced to demolish their apartments in Jabal al-Mukabbir.Though the Israeli Jerusalem municipality has said it receives a disproportionately low number of permit applications from Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem compared to the Jewish population, and that Palestinian applications “see high approval ratings,” procedures to apply for Israeli-issued building permits are lengthy, sometimes lasting for several years, while the application costs can reach up to 300,000 shekels ($79,180).

As four out of five of Palestinians in East Jerusalem live under the poverty line, applying for these permits is nearly impossible. As a result, only 7 percent of Jerusalem building permits go to Palestinian neighborhoods.Demolitions of Palestinian structures and homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have seen an unprecedented surge this year, with the number of structures demolished in the first half of 2016 well exceeding the total number of demolitions carried out in all of 2015.

At least 1,569 Palestinians have been displaced since the beginning of 2016 as a result of demolitions in the occupied territory, compared to 688 Palestinians displaced over the entirety of 2015, according to UN documentation.

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — In the span of one year, a 12- and a 13-year-old boy were shot and killed by armed authorities — one in the occupied West Bank, and one in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States.

Their names were Abd al-Rahman Ubeidallah, 13, and Tamir Rice, 12, and on Friday, a memorial was unveiled in their honor in the Aida refugee camp — where Ubeidallah was born, raised, and killed — near the southern occupied West bank city of Bethlehem.

Tamir, an African-American child, was shot by local Ohio police on Nov. 22, 2014 while playing alone with his toy gun in a park in Cleveland.

Within seconds of arriving on the scene to reports of a juvenile playing with what the caller reported was “probably a fake gun,” police officers shot Tamir in the chest. He was pronounced dead a day later.

Neither the American police officers nor the Israeli soldiers who killed Rice and Ubeidallah were indicted for killing the boys.

“We are dedicating this memorial in honor of two young lives which have been snuffed out unjustly,” said Reverend Graylan Hagler, who came with members of his congregation from Washington D.C. to dedicate the memorial inside the Aida playground, built by the NGO Playgrounds for Palestine.

“We are here to make a statement,” continued Hagler — a veteran social and economic justice activist and outspoken supporter of Palestinian human rights — “as people of color, as people of conscience, as black people…we join with you in grief, and we join with you in solidarity.”

The memorial, which was built in the shape of a book, featured paintings depicting the young Abd al-Rahman and Tamir, and read “every child has the right to engage in play and recreational activities and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.”

In a statement released by Playgrounds for Palestine, the group said the memorial was “an affirmation of our [Palestinian] solidarity with the struggles of Black America.”

“It is a gesture of love, and a commitment to struggle for spaces of safety and dignity for our children in a world that views their lives with contempt and suspicion because of the pigment of their skin or the religion into which they are born,” the statement concluded.

As local children from Aida and volunteers from Aida’s Lajee Center (“Refugee Center”) gathered around the memorial in the cold winter rain, clergy members and ministers from DC, Illionois, California, and Maryland bowed their heads and said a prayer.

“We pray for justice for all the black girls and boys, and for all the Palestinian boys and girls to grow up with justice and freedom,” the group prayed.

“As we say at home, black lives matter. But i’m also here to say that Palestinian lives matter,” Reverend Graylan concluded to a round of applause.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is a social and racial justice and equality movement which began in the United States in response to numerous extrajudicial killings of black Americans by police officers and civilians, and aims to work “for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”

Many within the movement have found a common struggle with Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory and its human rights abuses against the Palestinians, particularly as Israel has been the target of widespread international condemnation for what has been labeled by critics as a “shoot-to-kill” policy against Palestinians.

In a statement on the official Black Lives Matter Facebook page at the time, the group posted a picture of activists holding up Palestinian flags and signs of solidarity at the protest.

“In the fight for dignity, justice and freedom, the Movement for Black Lives is committed to the global shared struggle of oppressed people, namely the people of occupied Palestine and other indigenous communities who for decades have resisted the occupation of their land, the ethnic cleansing of their people, and the erasure of their history and experiences,” the statement said.

The statement concluded with the Black Lives Matter activists committing to “global struggle, solidarity, and support of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement to fight for freedom, justice and equality for Palestinian people and to end international support of the occupation.”

July’s protest was not the first time justice activists from the BLM movement visited Palestine or expressed solidarity with its people.

A group of activists, including prominent American journalist Marc Lamont Hill, from the movement released a video in January 2015, which was filmed in Nazareth in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against “Israeli apartheid.”

The video was filmed at the conclusion of a ten-day tour by representatives of groups associated with Black rights and racial justice including the Dream Defenders, Black Youth Project 100, Black Lives Matter, and activists associated with the Ferguson movement against police brutality.

Referencing cities in the United States which have become the focal points of protests and justice movements after repeated shootings of unarmed black men, the activists performed song, dance, and spoken word.

“We come here and we learn laws that have been co signed in ink but written in the blood of the innocent and we stand next to people who continue to courageously struggle and resist the occupation, people continue to dream and fight for freedom, from Ferguson to Palestine the struggle for freedom continues,” the activists said.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is convinced the fall of rebel-held areas of the Syrian city of Aleppo to the regime would not end the war in the country, she said on Saturday.

“I’m convinced the fall of Aleppo will not end the war,” Mogherini said during a panel discussion at a conference in Rome war with U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura.

As for de Mistura, he hoped “some type of formula” could be found to avoid a “terrible battle” in Aleppo.

Speaking at the conference, he indicated the battle for Aleppo would not last that much longer, saying “the fact is that Aleppo is not going to stay that long”.

“I was feeling it would be a terrible battle ending up by Christmas-New Year. I hope the battle will not take place, that there will be some type of formula,” he said.

Her statement came as Syrian regime and allied forces advanced overnight seizing Aleppo’s Tariq al-Bab neighborhood from rebels as they press an offensive to recapture the entire city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday.

The capture of the neighborhood means the regime has now retaken around 60 percent of the east of the city, which the rebels overran in mid-2012.

However, a Turkey-based official with one of the rebel groups in Aleppo said regime forces had advanced in the area but rebels were repelling them.

The regime’s attack on Tariq al-Bab came after ferocious clashes that sent civilians flooding out of the adjacent neighborhood of Al-Shaer.

The Observatory said at least three people were killed in an air strike on the al-Shaer. The civil defense rescue service in eastern Aleppo said a gathering of displaced people had been struck and put the death toll at more than six

More than 300 civilians have been killed in east Aleppo since the regime resumed its offensive to oust the rebels on November 15.

The United Nations has warned that the sector risks becoming a “giant graveyard” for the 250,000-plus civilians who were trapped there just last week. Tens of thousands have since fled.

The latest developments on the battlefield were accompanied by a stern stance from rebels.

A rebel official said that rebel commanders will not surrender eastern Aleppo to regime forces after Russia claimed it was ready for talks with the United States on the withdrawal of all rebels from the area.

“I asked the factions, they said ‘we will not surrender’,” said Zakaria Malahifji, the head of the political office of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim faction, speaking from Turkey.

“The military commanders in Aleppo said ‘we will not leave the city. There is no problem with corridors for civilians to leave, but we will not leave the city’,” he said.

Archbishop Attalla Hanna is the only senior Palestinian clergyman in the Greek Orthodox Church

“We received Theophilos’ message,” Atalla said, “cutting salaries does not scare us or stop our mission and our message will reach him very soon”

Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem has sacked Archbishop of Sebastia Attalla Hanna, a statement issued by Hanna’s office said on Friday.

“Patriarch Theophilos III of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem and his Holy Gathering decided today to stop the salary of Archbishop Attalla Hanna,” the statement said, noting that Hanna is the only Palestinian archbishop in the Greek Orthodox Church.

The statement cited “the latest stances” of the Archbishop Hanna and his “clear support” for many other issues, stressing that this measure aimed to “blackmail him and put pressure on him and all the Arab clergymen.”

Meanwhile, the statement noted that the salaries of other Arab clergymen were “arbitrarily stopped” by the Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox in Jerusalem.

In addition, the statement said that the Orthodox Church took several other “punitive” measures against Arab clergymen such as moving Archimandrite Christophoros from his monastery in Jordan to Jerusalem.

“We expected Theophilos to be wiser and more responsible, not to escalate the situation,” Hanna said in the statement, noting that he intended to sort out all issues peacefully. “We expected him to act as a spiritual pope and not to take revengeful decisions far from the spirituality of the church.”

He continued: “Currently, we are facing a new stage and new reality. It seems that we are being forced to take a stance that it is impossible to [view anything as] positive from Theophilos. But this will never affect our spiritual, humanitarian and patriotic message.”

The Archbishop said that Theophilos “should have punished those who call for recruitment in the occupation army or those who sell our endowments and are involved in conspiracies against the Christian existence in the region.”

“We received Theophilos’ message,” he concluded, “cutting salaries does not scare us or stop our mission and our message will reach him very soon.”

Israeli human rights groups have previously condemned Israeli authorities for failing to protect Palestinians from settler violence which occur almost on a daily basis

Extremist Israeli settlers assaulted an old Palestinian man near Al-Sawiya village south of Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank.

Palestinian security sources said that Issa Saleh Mohamed Saleh, 55, was taken to Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus after he was beaten by four Israeli settlers at an intersection near Al-Sawiya.

Medical sources said that the Palestinian suffered severe wounds in several parts of his body and needs to remain at hospital at least for one week.

Eyewitnesses said that the extremist Israeli settlers beat the Palestinian man before the eyes of the Israeli occupation soldiers, who are guarding the intersection.

However, there are Palestinian Authority police near the area where the Palestinian man was beaten, but they could interfere because they had no authority over the intersection.

Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, along with Israeli rights group B’Tselem, have previously condemned Israeli authorities for failing to protect Palestinians from settler violence or investigate attacks on harvesters and their olive groves that have occurred on a near daily basis.

Vice-president of the Syrian Coalition Abdul Ahad Steifo said that the ongoing brutal assault on Aleppo by the Assad regime, Russia and the Iranian militias has so far failed to achieve its objectives to retake the entire city in spite of the genocidal crimes being committed against civilians.

Aleppo has seen the gravest war crimes since World War II, Steifo said, adding that “the regime, Russia and Iran have not achieved their objectives in Aleppo. Russia is now seeking to get of the trouble it brought upon itself in Syria.”

Aleppo and its countryside have been subjected to ferocious onslaught by the Assad regime and Russian forces since November 15. Over 750 people, mostly women and children, have so far been killed and thousands more injured in the ongoing bombing campaign on the city and its countryside.

Steifo stressed the urgent need for the resumption of the political process through negotiations in Geneva and the enforcement of UN resolutions, especially the humanitarian provisions that call for an end to the bombing, lifting the sieges, the delivery of aid to civilians in need, and the release of detainees.

A right-wing Knesset member intends to submit a “racist” bill calling for economically punishing families of Palestinian children and teenagers who are convicted of throwing stones and launching attacks against Israelis.

According to Walla news website, the bill, which was prepared by MK Miki Zohar (Likud), will be referred to the Knesset’s ministerial commission for legislation on Sunday in order to obtain approval for tabling it for vote by Knesset members.

Zohar claimed that making families responsible for their children’s actions is part of what he described as Israel’s fight against terrorism.

He also said that Israel should deprive families of Palestinian attackers of all national insurance allowances, including unemployment benefits, pensions and work-injury payments.

This new legislation is only aimed at the Palestinians. The Israeli authorities have never taken any punitive measures, such as demolition of homes, against Jewish families, whose relatives were convicted of attacking Palestinians.